I read this book when it came out and I lost hope in Africans ability to govern. There is too much propaganda that the west is exploiting Africa. Africa has been given so many opportunities, so much money it defies belief.
Anybody with a brain could tell exactly what a president like Zuma will do. He represents the typical African mindset and politician. The crowds adore him. Despite looting he is still beloved by the people even though their situation never improved and even became more dire as a result of his looting.
An excerpt from the book
"Seen as too important to be allowed to fail, Kenya became the first sub-Saharan country in the 1980s to receive structural adjustment funding from the IMF. Between 1970 and 2006, this modest African country received a total of $US17.26 billion from its foreign allies, roughly one and a quarter times what the Americans spent on the Marshall Plan, designed to rescue the whole of war-ravaged Europe. At its height in the early 1990s, aid from both the multinational lending institutions and donor nations which followed their lead accounted for 45 per cent of the Kenyan government budget. Under Kibaki, that shrank to less than 5 per cent, thanks to improved tax collection, but the total – $768 million in 2005 – remained hefty by any standards.